


夜明けに震える 心を抱きしめて

by WennyT



Series: all i see is blue in my heart [1]
Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ
Genre: 2bonshinki, Brotp, Can be read as brotp or otp, Canon Compliant, Ficlet, Ficlet Collection, Gen, H8ers gonna h8, I swore not to write any canon AND I WILL NOT TOUCH CURRENT CANON, I think his name mentions are only second to Shim's, Kyuline, Sasaeng Fan(s), Time Skips, Toshi is not a character in this but, Writing Exercise, X japan - Freeform, as a plot device, gratuitous use of x japan songs, ot2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 22:35:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20590211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WennyT/pseuds/WennyT
Summary: Celebrating near-sixteen years and more of Shim Changmin’s resilience against hate.Alternatively:a fic about Shim Changmin’s love for the music crafted by Yoshiki and X Japan.





	夜明けに震える 心を抱きしめて

**Author's Note:**

> 夜明けに震える心を抱きしめて  
_roman._ yoake ni furueru kokoro wo dakishimete  
_trans._ hold my quivering heart as the day breaks.

* * *

** _stain/fruit/silence/hands/snow_ **

400 words each.

* * *

** _i. stain (endless rain)_ **

He doesn’t know how they found him. He’d picked this empty hallway out of the numerous other million empty hallways. 

They crowd around, deliberately shortened uniform skirts rustling. He thinks their legs, too white too skinny, knee-high socks dark and striped.

They look like those birds he saw in a textbook - blue grey with unproportioned stick-like legs, running in swamps. 

“Changmin-nie~”

“_Choi Kang _Changmin…”

“_Dong bang maknae_ ah.” 

Their smiles are an identical trio of crescents. The one on the left has yellow teeth. He clambers to his feet. Maybe she smokes.

They don’t look older than him. 

His parents taught him manners and SM burnt that and then some into his brain. He stands up, and removes his headphones halfway. Toshi’s voice spills out, tinny. “_Annyeonghasaeyo_.” 

Their smiles widen. The middle one shoves a brown paper bag at him. “For you, Changmin-nie~”

Don’t open anything we haven’t screened, the managers say. 

Don’t be rude to the fans, you are building and they are your livelihood, the managers say.

Changmin opens it. 

The smell hits him first. It’s fetid, iron, metallic. Incongruously, Changmin thinks of rusted nails. He looks down. 

The brown stain is vulgar against what must have been previously cotton. It’s brown and yellow and pink and white. It looks like a Rorschach test done in spilled coffee.

He can’t help himself. He retches. 

They titter, closing in. 

“That’s you, _ Choi Kang _ Changmin- worse than a used sanitary pad-”

“You’re useless. _ Oppa-deul’ _s voices will sound so much better with your screeching.”

Call somebody, he thinks. His phone is a lump in his pocket. Call one of the managers. 

His body isn’t obeying. He’s in shock, perhaps. 

He’s heard these things, but they’ve never come up to him like this. Right up to him.

They’re laughing now. There’s one behind him. He must have dropped the bag. It’s on the floor. 

One reaches out, but her hands are slapped away. 

There are other bodies in front of him - taller, welcoming backs. Familiar. The hand that holds his tightly is bigger, callused - from shovelling snow and doing part time work?

“Changdol, what are you doing - back off! Manager-_hyung-deul_, here!”

“Changmin-ah, are you ok? Shit, you _ sasaengs_\- _ hyung_, we’re here!” 

“_Hyung, hyung_! I think he’s- Hell, Changminnie, are you ok? Stupid! You should have run!” 

His headphones lie tangled around his neck, Toshi rasping on about forgetting the hate and sadness. 

* * *

** _ii. fruit (say anything)_ **

Changmin peels the mandarin oranges. The fresh tang of it tickles his nose. 

“Changmin-ah, you always peel the fruits so prettily,” his companion marvels. He’s helping. But the scraps of tangerine peel with too much fruit dangling from them are a sad wilted accusation.

Changmin snorts. The dormitory is silent otherwise. The others are out. 

He reaches over to his laptop and taps. Toshi sings, lamenting about distorted memories repeating. 

“You really like them, huh,” a nod towards his laptop. The tangerines are peeled. Nearly all of them are ragged at the edges, pips scattered on the table. 

“We are X,” Changmin murmurs automatically. The corner of his mouth lifts. He pulls the unpeeled navel orange to him.

“I wonder when we will be such legends,” the mutter is given to the fruits, more shape than sound. But Changmin hears it. 

He’s always better at listening to this _ hyung_. 

“You work harder than the rest of us to drive us, _ hyung_.” He says it to the bottles of orange juice. “I don’t know when, but we’ll make it. We already have some results. We just need to keep climbing.”

His hair gets ruffled. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

His companion turns serious. His arms are braced against the table. Changmin pretends he cannot see his mouth trembling. “Well? Shall we do this?” 

“You, not me.” Changmin retorts. They look like an army. The orange juice bottles, tangerines, mandarin oranges, navel orange. “I still think this is ridiculous.”

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, Changminnie.” A bottle is picked up, and set down. “Or until I’ve tried it.”

Changmin waits. 

A breath. 

Another. 

The bottle is picked up again. The safety cap is proving more of a challenge than usual, for shaky fingers. Changmin shifts, “I can help-”

“_No_!” Usually when Changmin is shouted at, he can feel himself shrinking. Not this time. He keeps still. 

“I just - I have to do this myself.” 

The orange juice bottle cap is ripped off. Toshi whispers about tears cleaning the scars of memory away against a swell of violins. Changmin huffs, “_Hyung_, it’s ok. We can always try aga-”

_ Chug chug chug, gulp gulp gulp_. The bottle gets slammed on the table as though it were a bottle of _soju _emptied at the _ pocha _ around the corner.

They stare at each other. And then-

“I think I’m going to throw up.” 

* * *

** _iii. silence (longing)_ **

They sit next to each other, in another empty hallway. This one is in SM, so they’re safe. Relatively.

He’s met this boy once, twice, numerous times before. Sometimes in smaller gatherings in their dorms. Sometimes with both full groups together. 

Chaos, usually. Put five teenage boys together and it’s a recipe for disaster in the form of cracking voices and testosterone-fueled angst. Eighteen of those, even with staff? A walking nightmare.

But this boy is quiet. Polite, but quiet. 

Changmin doesn’t blame him. He knows how it feels to be an outsider in your group. 

The silence unspools between them, each beat heavy and expanding. The central air conditioning clanks. 

Changmin looks at the faux wood tile beneath his trainers. It’s scuffed, sticky. The janitor probably hasn’t been by yet. 

He’s forgotten to pack his headphones for group practice today. It’s earphones instead. They looped over the tops of his ears, Toshi tucked safely into the curve of his pinnas.

He removes one of them. The other boy hasn’t moved, but the defensive curl of his posture has relaxed. His hands are open and flat on his folded knees. 

The silence has morphed. She smoothes from something pregnant and jagged. The air is light. 

Changmin holds out one-half of the earphones. Their eyes meet. “Do you want…?”

The other boy takes it, fingers hesitant. “Who- “

“X Japan,” Changmin offers. The other boy’s eyebrows go up, but he fits the bud to his left ear. 

Changmin resets the track. The cellos sound, long and low. “They’re rock gods. But this one is more of a ballad. Just with some guitar riffs because Yoshiki can’t resist.”

A smile spreads. “You remembered I like ballads.”

“Well,” Changmin lifts a shoulder, drops it. His answering smile is conspiratorial. “I like ballads too.”

They sit like this, content. 

Toshi’s voice fades into another track before “how do you cope?” interrupts again.

“With?” Changmin thinks he knows.

“With the… That. All the hate.” The other boy pleats his fingers together. “I don’t understand why they hate me so much.”

“I don’t know.” Changmin offers honestly. He keeps his gaze on the opposite wall. “Sometimes… It helps me to remember it’s not personal.” 

“It’s not?” Surprise makes the other whip around. The earphones jerk, dropping onto the floor from the abrupt movement. They don’t notice. 

Changmin shrugs. “It can’t be personal, if they don’t know you.”

* * *

** _iv. hands (forever love)_ **

Changmin eyes the pair of hands opposite him. The knuckles are scraped raw, almost bleeding. 

“_Hyung_,” his voice is barely audible in the too-big practice room. He reaches out. “_Hyung_, do you need-”

The hands are hidden swiftly. “_Changdol_. I’m fine.” 

It’s déjà vu. They’ve had many, many conversations like that. Changmin’s had enough. “No, you’re not.”

A shocked pause, and then a too-sharp laugh. The other boy- man, really, collapses next to him. His trainers are dirty and stained from too-long days in the practice room and too-long walks under the subway tracks. “So what are you going to do about it? Hide in your room and blast more X Japan?”

They stare at each other. The words hang between them. 

The other man’s head tilts back; eyes squeezed shut. Regret has made him mean. “Fuck, Changminnie, I’m so sorry-” 

“Yunho-yah.” The words are enough to halt the over-spill of apologies. 

Changmin knows it’s not offence that makes the other stop speaking. He’s earned the right to informality ten times over, years ago. 

“Have you seen the comments online?” He’s asked abruptly. “Even the fan message boards. Where did we go wrong?”

“You know I don’t look at netizen comments anymore,” Changmin says, quiet. He stretches to grab a still-sealed bottle of water. Changmin feels like Goldilocks. The practice room is too big for just two. 

Twisting at the seal, he passes the opened bottle over. The water is accepted and drunk without thought. “How can you not read them? They said, well-”

Their gazes meet again. Similar to so many years ago, Changmin pretends he hasn’t seen the other’s mouth trembling. 

Changmin doesn’t need to read them to know what they are saying. It’s things people have been saying for years, anyway. 

Useless. Waste of space. Lack of talent. Leftovers. Expired. Yesterday’s news. Failure. 

“Nothing good comes out of reading them. They don’t know us.” 

“And we don’t know _ them_.” Changmin knows the collective ‘them’ said out loud to him, is not referring to the online community, too abundant in South Korea.

“I don’t know. I just know I’m angry,” he admits. The other is silent, but he allows Changmin to reach for the first aid kit he’s taken to packing in his bag. 

“Changmin-ah. Do you want to do this together with me?” 

“_Hyung_,” he reaches over. Fingers entwine. He squeezes. They squeeze back. “We are T.”

* * *

** _v. _ ** ** _**s**now (rusty nail)_ **

He breathes in deeply. The frigid air warms his lungs somehow. 

The mountains are beautiful. The snow fell until a little while ago. A fresh layering of white makes the trees look like a giant hand shook powdered sugar all over. Delicious. 

“Ugh, _ hyung_-yah,” the grumbling behind him continues. “Can you stop being an obnoxious Disney princess?” 

He can’t help but snicker. Changmin darts a look behind him. “What’s happened to your passion? Are you falling behind?”

The younger man huffs and puffs. The flaps of his Russian bear hat waggle. “Excuse you. I am the most passionate and fittest in all of SM!” 

Their eyes catch. Changmin raises an eyebrow. 

“Okay, not the most most most passionate. We all know who that title belongs to.” The concession is given with grudging amusement. 

“And don’t you forget it.” Changmin smirks. His crampons make crisp crunching noises with each step. 

He’s humming, he realises. The clock is still ticking, but Changmin’s made peace with it. 

There’s a little more than six months left. It’s not an ending. 

Behind him, another complaint sounds. “There you go again! _ Hyung_, you’re nuts. Who climbs a mountain while singing! Are you Elsa?” 

Changmin turns, his smile hidden behind his black neck gaiter. “どれだけ淚を流せば, 貴方を忘れられるだろう...?”

He receives an eyeroll. “Okay, fine. Elsa is more power ballads than rock opera anthems. Maybe Pocahontas?”

Changmin is in the middle of humming “記憶の扉を記したままで-” and breaks off. “How is this Pocahontas-like?” 

“Well- singing about strong convictions amongst nature and everything.” His companion gestures with a trekking pole and nearly over-balances. 

They continue the next few minutes in silence. 

“I’m enlisting.” The words are hushed, packed densely in the winter chill. 

The younger man starts. “I- does Yunho-_hyung _ know?” 

Changmin’s ears are numb from the cold. He doesn’t mind. “Not yet. The managers do, though. And Young-min _ seongsaeng-nim_.” 

He brushes a hand over a white-covered boulder. His fingers leave little indents as he moves away. “I’m telling him soon. He won’t be pleased.” 

The younger man catches up slightly. His breaths are coming out in visible white. “Well… The haters are going to eat their words. The ones who say you can’t wait for him to go.” 

They round yet another bend. 

“I guess,” Changmin says, amused. The mini icicles dripping off the bare oak branches look like Nature’s answer to Christmas lights in the city. 

“Anyway, it’s a shorter intermission.” 

* * *

  
** _vi. 御負け_ **

_ roman. omake _

The last note of Rusty Nail is a memory still against the empty cavern of his throat. 

He smiles at the sea of red flickering lights, and jokes. 

Yes, his other half has run off to another place. Yes, he is following soon. 

But for his swan song, he will remake what was theirs into his well-wishes. 

He looks at the two figures, on either side of him. The swell of music in his ears overpowers the excited roar of the crowd. 

Yunho-yah, he thinks. 見守るよ 君の愛すべき未来を. I’ll guard your - our - future. Just for a little while. Then I’m joining you. 

* * *

いつまでも 君を照らし続けるよ

見守るよ 君の愛すべき未来を 

どこにいても 僕は願い続けるよ 

守るから.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> \- This is a writing exercise for 5 one-word prompts, 400 word ficlets each.  
\- And also 'cause Shim Changmin is not a delicate hothouse flower, unused to certain factions of fandom hatin’ on him. The haters gonna h8 h8 h8 h8/ Baby I’m just gonna sh8 sh8 sh8 sh8 / Shake it off, shake it off~  
\- The used sanitary pad incidents were only the tip of bullying/hate/sasaeng incidents Shim faced from 2004 to 2009/10.  
\- The orange juice incident is emblazoned on the brains of any Cassie/BE who were around in the early years of DB5K’s debut.  
\- Kyuhyun faced unrelenting and maniac hatred the first year he joined Suju; his car accident was so serious and went a small way in alleviating some of the fan resentment against him. But even then there were crazies saying he should have died (rather than disrupt the dynamics of the original 05 group).  
\- Shim and Kyu's conversation is inspired by Pooh and Piglet's conversation on That Difficult Day.  
\- Shim and Jung have said before that “We are T” is inspired by “We are X”, a call by X Japan during their cons. The original has the band going “We are….” during concerts, with audience response being “X”.  
\- Shim has stated before that he made the '15 Hallasan trip with Minho as a “last trip before my enlistment so I could enlist with a beautiful memory”.  
\- My personal opinion is that performances of Bolero with 2 voices are much cleaner, more powerful and intense without being overblown and dramatic. The melodic variations can be better appreciated.


End file.
